Typo Fraud

We’ve heard that scammers love typos. Why is that so? Think about typing in a website (because you’ve heard that is better than clicking a link in an email, which is true!) but you mistype .com with .cm, or instead of .org it’s .ogg.

Scammers know that people make mistakes, and they are waiting. They have bought addresses with just one letter away from real websites to hijack unwitting Internet users. It’s a new hack called “typosquatting” intended to trick users, according to the National Consumers League.

The unintended website could ask you for personal information that you believe is secure. It could look just like the correct website and lures people to give Social Security numbers, account numbers, names and passwords.

The fake sites could also be selling knock-off imitation products, as well as gathering sensitive data, the National Consumers League said in an alert issued this month. This is just another reason to be very careful when using the Internet.